Guiraut Riquier

More poems of this troubadour survive than any other, almost twice as many. Forty eight of Riquier's eighty nine poems are extant. They were scored both as "vers" and "cansos." The "vers," approximately seventeen of the twenty, were arranged in bar form and fifteen of the twenty five "cansos" were through-composed or set as "lais." Interestingly, out of the works that survive, few if any of them used contrafactum. This essentially means that each poem had a melody unto itself: a melody was not used over for different poetic texts. Monody prevailed in these vers and cansos. Riquier is considered the last of the troubadours. He worked in the service of Amalrich IV, Alfonso X, King of Castile and Henry II, Count of Rodez. ~ Keith Johnson